French gold medallists Perec and Riner light Olympic cauldron

By Tassilo Hummel

PARIS (Reuters) -French three-times Olympic gold medallists Marie-Jose Perec and Teddy Riner capped a spectacular opening ceremony at the Paris Games on Friday by lighting the Olympic cauldron, which will burn for the duration of the sporting extravaganza.

Perec, 56, won three gold medals across two Olympics in athletics and was the heavy favourite to light the cauldron near the Louvre Museum.

Riner, who is competing in Paris, has won two individual judo gold medals and one team gold.

"A man and a woman for the first parity Games was an obvious choice. I waited this morning to tell them," Paris 2024 organising committee president Tony Estanguet told reporters.

Perec is widely considered France's greatest summer Olympian, having won the 400 metres at the Barcelona Games in 1992 before claiming a 200-400 double four years later in Atlanta.

Like Riner, Perec was born in the overseas territory of Guadeloupe.

Riner, 35, will bid for a third individual gold when he starts his event in the +100kg category.

They were each handed a torch in the Jardin des Tuileries after several top sporting names, including French soccer great Zinedine Zidane, Spain's 14-times French Open tennis champion Rafael Nadal, American 23-times Grand Slam winner Serena Williams and Romanian gymnastics great Nadia Comaneci.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel and Julien Pretot, editing by Leigh Thomas, Ken Ferris and Pritha Sarkar)